In 2016, after a long period of focusing on painting, I decided to broaden my scope. It was a time of change in my life: a new home, a new job and new responsibilities. I started thinking about our daily actions and our relationship with our time and the spaces and places we move through. The projects that came from this period were varied, but created a new well of inspiration that I have drawn from ever since.

Gardening

I spent some time clearing my overgrown garden, and thinking about the culture of gardening in the UK. It’s a national pastime. I wrote some gardening mantras that captured that spirit - they would look good on a mug.

Painting

While clearing my garden, I found lots of rocks. I painted unhappy faces onto them and distributed them along the forest path that ran behind the house, where I enjoyed taking moody walks. I hid them behind trees and under thick ivy, little shrines with families of pitiful rocks.

I wondered whether people would ever find them. Maybe there’s an old lady who has collected them all and has them on a shelf in her house. Maybe all the paint has washed off in the rain and they’re just rocks again, and nature has reclaimed them. I’ll go back someday and find out.

Looking up

It started with a walk in the countryside. I came across a very tall tree, and filmed my quest to touch it. To me the tree was a greater power, and by touching it I was connecting its scale and my scale. It amazed me that something so large and something so small could exist in the same world, and make physical contact.

That inspired me to touch all the tallest buildings in London. I went on several adventures, from the City to Canary Wharf, Crystal Palace to Elephant and Castle, and took a photograph of my hand touching the building, and another one looking up. It felt like I was conquering these huge buildings, making peace with them.

Touching

You can never touch the top of a tall tree or building, but if you stand on a stack of objects you can touch the ceiling of a room. Some ceilings are easily reached, and for others you need some assistance.

Pointing

A photograph is a way of pointing, of saying ‘look at this!’. So to have a photograph of a hand pointing is like having an arrow inside an arrow. My hand points to distant planes, singling them out, noticing them.

Reaching

A ladder is like a double-headed arrow: it points up and down. A ladder can unite any two levels if it is long enough. I made a painting of a ladder that had all the potential of a real ladder, but was impossible to use.

Drawing

Just like my painting series the year before, this small booklet aims for perfection but is doomed to fail. The lines were drawn freehand - some are longer than 5cm, and some are shorter than 5cm, but they’re all perfect to me.